


Raven

by infinite_regress



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s09e10 Face the Raven, F/M, Gen, Mystery, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Season 8 and 9 Doctor Who (2005), Spoilers for 'this christmas' and 9 months on the run', This Christmas, the raven, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6683542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_regress/pseuds/infinite_regress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quantum shade in the incarnate form of a raven, and the mark, a young human woman.  It was a job like any other for the transition team, a contract to be fulfilled.</p><p>Then they assigned me, and I was already having a bad month. What could possibly go wrong?   </p><p>A companion story to 'This  Christmas' and 'Nine Months on the Run'  and contains major spoilers for those stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Raven Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> When Raven refers to Clara and the Doctor's third chance, he is talking about the events post Hell Bent (non-canon) beginning with the story 'Valentine on the Orient Express' , and in subsequent stories in the 'Wiggle Room' serise.
> 
> The story is written from the point of view of the Raven, who has his own his own journey.

 

**Raven: Part One**

 

I have many names and forms, I’ve worn them all: The Ferryman, The Grim Reaper, Destroyer, Eater of Stars, The Veiled One, but this is the tale of the time I was called The Raven.

I was one of a billion eternal non-corporal beings, existing in a insubstantial realm outside space and time, tasked with (only don’t ask who tasked us) maintaining the universal balance between existence and non-existence. If it helps, you can think of us as the transition team, silent guides from one thing to the next.

Corporal beings everywhere trip, trip though their little lives thinking they have all the time in the world, then one day when they least expect it, they find themselves drowning in sorrow, and haunted by ‘If only’s.’   

The worst offenders in my view, are the Time Lords. Regeneration, they call it.  We call it _cheating_ , and we catch up with them in the end. They are stuffy, arrogant beyond measure, think they know everything when they understand precisely nothing. We’ve been clearing up their mess for a very long time.

I’ve only met one Time Lord I’ve got any time for. The very one, in fact, I’m watching through this window right now. But I’m jumping ahead. I expect you want to know how it is I’m hopping around this garden, peck pecking, flap flapping up into these branches, and looking through a window at all. You might have a passing interest in how it is I’m freer now, stuck in the body of this bird, than I ever was when I could cross the universe on a photon in the blink of an eye.

It started, the same way everything started in The Realm, with B&A. That’s briefing and allocation, a run-down of the missions, and well, allocation. Think of it like suiting up for the day, pulling on overalls or buttoning up a tunic (between you and me it’s actually more like a sub-molecular phase-shift, but if the other thing helps, stick with that).

The Dark One stood by the podium with her clipboard. ‘38th Division.’ The 38th rumbled, they seemed to get the plum jobs lately.

‘Squadron’s 13 and 26, Skull Moon.’ Smug looks all round.

‘8 and 9. Sterling job clearing up Europe’s little carnage of 1918, but I’m afraid you have to go back and deal with the Spanish Flu’s 20 million.’ 

A groan, and I swear someone muttered, ‘Not more mud.’ I zoned out. It was always the same.

Someone flounced past. ‘Lost anyone today?’ I ignored that. Honestly, it could have happened to anyone. ‘You might want to look at this. Page 12.’ She dropped a copy of ‘Rules of Transition for Dummies’ on my lap and sloped off, giggling to her friend. I let it slide to the floor and kicked it under the chair behind me.

I know very well, I don’t need a book thrust in my face to remind me of the _two rules_. Well, there’s a lot more than two actually, but they are the big ones. The ones that evoke lectures that start with, ‘We don’t make these rules for the sake of it,’ and, ‘It’s for your own safety.’

Rule two is this: whether you are corporeal, non-corporeal, visible or invisible, you must not for any reason have actual _contact_ with anyone except the mark. Means you have to stay alert, stay focused and stay on target, and if you don’t things get pretty hairy. And the other rule? The one they scare new cadets with, the one you must never ever break?

I’ll tell you about that one later.

The assignments were handed out, and as usual, the ranks thinned until I was left alone, back of the chamber, facing The Dark One with her clipboard.

‘Hmmm, let’s see. Lost anyone today? No, I’m sure _that_ won’t happen again,’ she said in a tone that meant she thought the opposite highly probable. I won’t bore you with it, but it really wasn’t _all_ my fault.

She smirked as she looked at the last job on her list. ‘Perfect. Got a quantum shade for you.’ My heart, if I had one at that point, would have sunk. Those buggers can take ages to fulfil. You might end up chasing runners half way across the universe, as if they don’t know it’s pointless. Once a shade is contracted, there really is no way out. Too often they run. It’s much better when they look me in the eye.

‘Two marks, various non-marks in the vicinity. Oh. _Him again,_ ’ she said squinting at her list.

‘Who?’

‘That Time Lord. Not met him yet? The thief, the meddler, the one with as much compassion in his hearts as blood on his hands, and _that’s_ a rare combination. We all meet him some time or other, why, the first time _I_ met him…’ she tailed off and fell silent.

I sighed. ‘Okay, what’s the Incarnate?’ I hoped for _Eater of Stars_ , that shape really rocks.

Another smirk. ‘The Raven.’

‘You’re kidding?’ But I knew from the smirk she wasn’t kidding.

‘Feathers suit you,’ she said, and waved an indifferent hand towards the Entry Point. The smirk faded and I got a hint of the _dark look_ , ‘Try not to muck this one up.’

 

I slipped through the Entry Point, to Earth, London, 2016.

I became the Raven.

I was in a cage, but not really _caged_. I see everywhere and every-when. Mark one was begging for his life.

‘Lock me up, throw us out, anything but this. Please, I only took it to save her,’ he said. I look hard into him and know he’s going to be a runner.

A non-mark says, ‘Once it’s bound to its victim, you could flee across all of time and all of the universe, it would still find you.’ He _got it_. I looked hard at _him_. It was the Time Lord.

A message flashed up from HQ that the contract for mark two was on the wrong neck, but I was preoccupied dealing with the runner, so I didn’t have much time to think about it.

He ran, and was a shame, I thought, as I swallowed him up and sent him onwards. I’d always preferred it when they met me with courage. It made the transition so much more dignified. _This_ was unsatisfying. I think that’s what had been troubling me, too many jobs leaving me feeling I’d missed the point, that there should be more to existence. I suppose most beings like to feel they’ve done a good days work, and I had not felt _that_ for a very long time.

By the time I regrouped, the contract for mark two was on the right neck.

The mark had a big heart, trying to make it alright for the Time Lord. He was bleeding, I could smell it, a raw open wound tearing his soul, but I didn’t imagine then just how far he would go to save her. 

‘Bad timing,’ she said. ‘Be a little proud.’ I didn’t understand until much later what it all meant. She touched his face, and he kissed her hand.

Looking back, I think was at that very moment the quantum crack first appeared.

But I had a job to do, so I vectored and set off towards the mark. One flap, one feather’s breadth closer, and I had her. But a door opened and he held out his hand. ‘I can save you.’

Like I said, Time Lords cheat. But this one? He’s a gold-plated cheater. He’s the jewel encrusted, sceptre-holding king of cheaters, in the clothes of an ordinary man.

In the end, I came to admire him. Which is how we all ended up _here_.  

You see, they couldn’t let go, even after all the fine words and tears, the noble sentiment of separation for the universes sake, and flying off in different directions, it all meant nothing once she tracked him down again and they got their _third chance._ Once they started down that path on the Orient Express at Valentine, they really couldn’t stop.

They thought they were clever, using Hawking radiation to deflect me, and it worked to a degree. Threw me right off, when I tracked her down to the magnetic north pole at Christmas, and I ended up doing a _twirly_. That’s what we called it when we arrived _too early_. The trick is (as they taught us at the academy) to keep your head down, stay still and wait. So I was twirly, and I tried to lay low, but it was the _wings_. I stretched those glossy feathers -they were black as a dark star at midnight- and I flapped a little, then hopped. Then I flapped _and_ hopped, and I was airborne. I soared across the mess hall, air rushing under my wings, feathers ruffed in the breeze, a little thrill in my avian stomach (I had a stomach!) as I swooped and dived. It sent my tiny heart racing. You see, travel in my line of work is technical, efficient, and fast. This was _freedom_.

And that was the first time I ran into trouble with _rule two_ that day.

‘There’s a damn bird in the base!’ 

‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re at the freaking magnetic north pole…Oh.’

It was barely _contact_ at all. The lightest brush of a tip of a feather against a non-mark’s cheek. _Now_ of course I’ll believe them when they say ‘It’s for you own safety,’ in that pompous tone.

The universe exploded around me, I was splintered into a million pieces, everywhere, every-when in one excruciating flash. Fragmented into a swirling mass, it was all I could do to hold onto this dimensional plane. I don’t know what it looked like from the outside of course, but I guess it wasn’t pretty, as the five non-marks screamed, panicked and vacated the area fast. I was left swirling, disorientated and nauseated and more than a bit embarrassed. Naturally the whole thing would flash up on my dashboard for every tech to see, and it would be round the whole Realm before rollcall.

I phased in and out for a while and tried to lock on to the next intersection with the mark. There was a shimmer of temporal energy outside (I can sniff a TARDIS light years away) but in my splintered condition it was hard to get a lock and control my vector. I corporealised in front of the mark, still in fragments, locked in, started my run and realised the Time Lord was _right in the way_. 

That was the second time I fell foul of rule two that day, and if it was excruciating the first time, it was a supernova in every pore of my being the second time. For an instant after I plunged into his back I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back into me.

He was fire and ice.                                                                                             

I saw pain and loss, sharp as shattered glass in the midday sun, alongside awe and wonder. For a moment it seemed that the universe turned and _he_ stayed still. I saw through his eyes and found my own eyes wanting.

But I had a job to do. I had another stab at catching my mark. As I spiralled into the air, I knew I was less than I had been, that the abyss had changed me, and when I plunged toward the mark with her hands over her face, breath coming in rasps, I was muddled: there wasn’t enough of me to finish the job.

And I saw the universe through _her_ eyes for an instant. It was the colour of courage, and it smelled of never giving up, and there was wonder there too. I ricocheted off, and flipped out of that dimensional plane to re-group, then plunged back to the next intersection with the mark. It was a few hours later by their reckoning, and they were doing something ridiculous with a tree, trying to pull it through the door of his TARDIS.

He said, ‘Uh oh. My dimensional phase trigger’s just gone off.’

I located the mark, vectored in, and I would have had a clear run if it wasn’t for the Time Lord pointing his sonic device at me and muttering, ‘What frequency? No, no. That’s better! Ha, you don’t like that, do you?’

The vibrational energy sent me spinning off back between dimensions, and by the time I re-vectored he’d set up a resonance loop. So that was that for the magnetic north pole, I knew I would never get through there.

I suppose it was then I got curious and decided to hop and flap in and out of their time lines to find out a bit more about this odd pair.

And you know what they say: _curiosity buggered the bird._

 


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is part two of the companion story that runs alongside 'This Christmas' and 'Nine Months on the Run.'

I wanted to know more about this strange pair, the Time Lord and the human, the owl and the dove, so I hopped in and out of their history, having a good look as I went. What a story!

I should mention, I used the _search function_ to track them. It’s like _Google_ with parameters set for the whole of time and space, delivered to me via intergalactic Wi-Fi. _Actually_ , it’s more of an existential exploration engine, sent to me using a hybrid superstring as a conduit, but if the other thing makes more sense then go with that.

I found three entangled time-lines coloured _pink_. Or should I say GREEN? Because the Time Lord glowed a pretty shade of envy when the soldier held her hand.

‘You’ve made a boyfriend error,’ he grumbled.

‘Beat that for a date,’ he crowed.

‘I thought I better hide in your bedroom in case you brought anyone back.’ That was clever: stop her bringing anyone in there just in case there was a blue box in the corner of the room and a Time Lord perched on her bed.

Of course, she was playing games too.

I was listening in at the end of the universe when she said, ‘You’ve got your own mood lighting now? Because frankly the accent’s enough.’ That got my attention, but the Time Lord wasn’t very good at picking up on _clues_.

And the lies! This pair told super-cluster sized lies: to the poor soldier, to each other, and most of all to _themselves_.

‘Danny’s fine with it,’ she fibbed.

‘Yeah, my boyfriend’s back,’ she lied.

‘I’ve found my home.’ What a whopper! It nearly went pear-shaped there. Truth is, I was rooting for them by then. I zipped along the time-tracks to Christmas, saw their second chance, and I almost cheered.

I followed him for a while, this enigmatic Time Lord weaving his magic across the cosmos in a lonely dance, until he found himself on Skaro looking for a bookshop, or so he said. I was disappointed in him at first, leaving that young boy alone and afraid, but turns out compassion was his superpower that day. A little bit of compassion goes a long way. Then it hit me, that’s what’s missing from my job. _Compassion_.

At that moment I got a message from the too-big-for-his-boots tech from my dashboard. He was on power-kick. ‘What are you playing at? If you don’t get on with the job, I’ll flag you up.’

I groaned. I said, ‘I’m on it,’ and jumped out of their history and back to their present. I corporealised right by her, but the Hawking radiation was still there. It stung, and bounced me right out of the dimensional plane, and he blocked me again. I kept trying, I really did, but he blocked me each time. He _was_ a clever one. And by then, to be honest, I wasn’t sorry he stopped me.

I got wind of a juicy paradox, under a lake and before a flood, and before I knew it, I’d vectored in on that instead. I never could pay attention when my heart wasn’t in it.

He was holding his guitar and when he said, ‘History continues with barely a feather ruffled.’ I thought, ‘Are you talking to me?’ I could ruffle a few of _your_ feathers. I had to admire him, he was changing history to save her, you don’t often see that. I was getting interested, you might say hooked. It was more satisfying to watch them together than it was to be the force tearing them apart.

I watched closely and though they never saw me, I cheered them on. For every smile, every hug he tried to pretend meant little, each smouldering glance they shared, I was there.

She said once, “If you love me, in anyway, then you’ll come back to me,” and her name was always on his lips.

I watched them in the Viking village, as he told her, ‘I’m so sick of losing people,’ with a world of sadness in his eyes, unaware that one of those incorporeal stealers of dreams sat by his shoulder. I coloured in shame as he spoke. I followed them, my head bowed, back to their ship, and watched as he tried to tell her how he felt.

‘She might meet someone she can’t bear to lose.That happens, I believe.’

It came out wrong, I think. They were good at talking in tongues, terrible at saying how they felt, but I was more and more convinced they were in love. That’s why I tracked him to a placewe have a _little_ difficulty getting to. But I computed the vector and got through.

A confession dial.

I saw into his soul. He was playing them at their own game. He was going the long way round, but he was making his way back to her. He deserved a _hint_. So I sat, invisible and incorporeal, on his shoulder and clacked in his ear.

‘Time Lord, how many seconds in eternity?’ I said,‘You have to _peck_. I’m sorry you don’t have a lovely strong beak like me, you’ll have to use that soft fist of yours. NOW PECK AWAY’

When he said, ‘That’s a hell of a bird,’I couldn’t help feeling a bit proud.  

I was invested in them at that point,

I flapped down into the Cloisters, a terrible place, even we don’t like to go there, but it was like an addiction for me by then. It’s against basic training, they warn us time and time again, “Don’t get attached.”

I had to _know._

‘Why, why would you do that to yourself?’

‘I had a duty of care,’ he said. It looked like she was his air and he couldn’t breathe with out her.

‘We should say things, people like us, before it’s too late,’ she said, tears in her eyes, ‘I wish I’d told you sooner, I’m sorry I didn’t.I love you. I’ll never stop loving you.’

I had to flap away at that point, I think I had a speck of something in my eye. Do you know what it’s like when know something is going to be painful, but you watch anyway? That was me. I found myself at the end of the universe, sitting invisibly on the console of her TARDIS, watching them part. It was heart-breaking, tragic, and absolutely bloody stupid. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?’ I flapped as he fell to the floor.

I watched them go their separate ways so sadly. Her time-locked tears, his emptiness. I could hardly bear it.

But she was clever, he didn’t call her ‘never-giving-up’ for nothing. She arranged a rendezvouson the Orient Express, room 12, in the cross hairs of a quasar and a black hole. He remembered, she was awake and they were hugging and twirling, and I thought if he doesn’t kiss her this time I might just have to give _him_ a peck! I couldn’t stay long because of the radiation, but oh, _at last,_ he kissed her, she kissed him, and (I’d have put a wing to my eyes, but feathers wouldn’t block much) soon that trampy dress was on the floor, and finally… well, you get my drift.

I watched their story unfold, the Time Lord and his lover, from Valentine to Christmas and their months on the run: they fought so hard, came so close. I cried with them when they gave up their Valentine child.

It was then I got a message from the Dark One. ‘Get it done!’ she screamed, ‘If you don’t fulfil this contract before my timer runs out, I’m sending in squadron 8 and you’ll do a shift in the Cauldron!’

It hit me: all the rules and reasons that kept these two apart were _wrong_. My entire existence was bound by the rules of transition, and it was _wrong_. That was when I decided I was _never_ going back and that it didn’t have to end this way for the Time Lord and his lover either.

_I_ had a duty of care. 

You’ve waited long enough.I’ll tell you the second rule, the rule they scare cadets with, the rule you must never ever break: **Leave by Authorised Exit Points Only**.

I was on the Trap Street again, and a glimmer of a ghost of a sub-atomic crack creaked open.I thought carefully, weighed the options,gave each due consideration, oh, for at least a micro-second, then I knew exactly what to do.

I winked across the timelines. I sucked in regeneration energy, Hawking radiation, synchrotron radiation for all I was worth. I gobbled up courage, love and never giving up; I chewed that delicious feast until it bubbled and tickled in my tiny bird tummy. 

Then I span through space and time and found the Time Lord, hearts broken, nailed to his cross with the gold light glowing, and tucked him under my wing. I paused a moment to look back at the new man, ready for his adventure, looking for his first-face. I cawed “Good luck Time Lord” in his direction, then we were off.   

Now, I’m not a cruel bird, not anymore. I’m a clever, compassionate bird. If it will help you understand what I did nextthink of it this way: I winked into the Valentinechild’s room, made a perfect copy, left one and took one with me. _In fact_ , I exploited the quantum properties of superposition in the best tradition of Schrodinger’s cat, but if that hurts your brain, then the first explanation works. I tucked the baby under my wing, and went back to the Trap Street.

I swooped towards the Time Lord’s lover, the Valentine child’s mother, bravely facing her fate with her arms out-stretched, and I _winked_.

Her body fell to the cobbles: contract fulfilled.

I gathered her up and tucked her under my wing, and I blew everything I’d swallowed toward the quantum crack: possibilities, radiation, regeneration energy, love, hope and never giving up. It may have _looked like_ smoke on the wind, and you can think of it that way if you like. 

But it was a key.

A key to an **Unauthorised Exit Point.**

We flew away together, through an infinity of impossible things, to freedom.

So here I am, hopping around this garden, peck pecking, flap flapping up into these branches, and looking through a window. I see the Time Lord, his lover and their Valentine child at the window, and they are smiling and crying all at once.

And me? I’m freer now in the body of this bird than I ever was when I could cross the universe on a photon in the blink of an eye.

I think I’ll stay, make a home here in this garden. I could scare away the heron if she tries to steal the carp from the pond, and make a right royal racket at strangers I don’t like the look of. In summer I’ll watch over the Valentine child playing in the sand-pit, and in winter I’ll watch themwith frozen fingers and rosy cheeks, build snowmen. Later I’ll peep through the curtains as they cuddle up by the fire.

Every day I’ll swoop across the fells and soar over the beehives with the wind under my wings, and then come right back down to earth in this garden. Sometime, I might even sit still long enough for the Time Lord to sketch me.Yes, that’s what I’ll do.A bubble of pride grows in my avian belly, and I strut happily around the garden.

At last, I can say I’ve done a good days work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now you know what that black smoke really was!

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experimental point of view, please let me know what you think by leaving a comment!


End file.
